Creators of “participatory defense” – a community organizing model for people facing charges, their families, and communities to impact the outcome of cases and transform the landscape of power in the court system

Month: January 2012

Jakadrien, ( was14 years old, when she went missing) mother Johnisa Turner and grandmother Lorene Turner in desperation contacted all the right agencies to help find Jakadrien, but in the end they failed the family and Jakadrien. Their cry for help, fell on deaf ears. Submission Post by Gail Noble

(CNN) — A Dallas teenager who ran away from home more than a year ago somehow wound up deported to Colombia after U.S. authorities mistook the girl, who lacked identification, for a Colombian national. Now her family is demanding to know why immigration authorities deported the now-15-year-old teen — a U.S. citizen with no knowledge of Spanish — and why they simply took her at her word when she gave them a fake name.

The family of Jakadrien Turner had been searching for her since she ran away in the fall of 2010. Her grandmother scoured Facebook looking for the girl, viewing Jakadrien’s friends’ pages for any information. Continue reading →

It’s hard to think of places in the United States that don’t provide public defenders, leaving those who are poor with less of a shot at getting some “justice” from the justice system. I can only imagine how justice was dealt with before. Hopefully now with a system in place, the courts can be a little fairer for the poor in Alabama. Photo on the right is of Kevin Butler, the first US Public Defender appointed in North Alabama (Birmingham News/ Joe Songer) Submission Post by Charisse Domingo

First US public defender in North Alabama to build offices in Birmingham and Huntsville

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — North Alabama’s first federal public defender says he hopes to have offices in Birmingham and Huntsville open by summer with a staff to defend federal criminal defendants who can’t afford to hire their own lawyers.

Since beginning his job in October as the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of Alabama, Kevin Butler has been busy interviewing potential staff and locating office space in the two cities. He’s also begun fighting on behalf of a few indigent criminal defendants.

Butler said his first goal for the office is to provide “the highest-quality representation of the indigent defendant as soon as possible.”Continue reading →

In a recently released media alert, ICE has presented new features to the ICE immigration detainer (Form I-247). Detainer requests are the device ICE uses to request local jails to hold people beyond their local sentence in order for ICE to then pick them up and place them in detention. The new form, and press release, may be in response to the national criticism of their Scomm (Secured Communities) program. Counties such as Santa Clara County and Chicago have lead the charge against ICE’s detainer policies.

The new features may represent positive impact for counties across the United States, if actually enacted. Here in Santa Clara County, the Santa Clara coalition against SCOMM has been working hard in advocating for all immigrants that could be impacted by detainers. We also see the same hard work being done in countless counties across the nation. This new ICE detainer form has potential in shifting who will eventually get deported and who will not in other counties – again depending on how counties and states respond to the announced changes, and how sincere ICE is in these changes. First off, the document does state that the detainer request form is in fact a request. Many county officials across the county did not know that a detainer is an actual request, rather erroneously thinking it was legally mandatory. And in an interestingly worded statement, the press release states that “the new form allows ICE to make the detainer operative only upon the individual’s conviction.” ICE, through SCOMM, currently sends people into detention regardless of conviction or not. Another interesting part of the form is that they have now incorporated a hot-line one could call to lodge a complaint or any issues that one may have with their hold, although I wouldn’t trust a hot-line made by the same department of the government that is trying to work so hard in getting immigrants deported out of. Continue reading →

Check out this exciting new creation by our friend Amy Bach, author of Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court, who is starting a measure and improve systemic problems in our court system. Reading her book was like reading a diary for ACJP families, and we are certain her new Justice Index is going to lead to real, tangible, and life-changing improvements in the courts…check it out at: http://measuresforjustice.org/